Are Online Job Postings Informative to Investors?
研究发现公司在线招聘数量的变化能预测未来业绩，投资者对此有正面反应，尤其在招聘用于增长而非替代时，以及劳动密集度低的企业中。
Human capital is a key factor in value creation in the modern corporation. Yet the disclosure of investment in human capital is scant. We propose that a company’s online job postings are disclosures made outside of the investor-relations channel that contain forward-looking information that could be informative to investors about future growth. We find that changes in the number of job postings are positively associated with changes in future performance and that this relation is stronger when postings likely represent growth rather than replacement. Consistent with job postings providing new information to the market, investors react positively to changes in the number of job postings. The market reaction to postings is stronger when firms are likely to be hiring for growth rather than replacement and for firms with low labor intensity (and therefore high marginal productivity of labor). This paper was accepted by Brian Bushee, accounting.